Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Operating a ship is difficult. On any given voyage, there are competing factors that influence the operator's decisions, making it difficult to truly optimize overall performance. Typical factors include the voyage schedule, or timeliness of the operation, the distance covered during the voyage, fuel consumption, various factors connected to the safety of the operation, and adherence to a long list of regulations and international conventions. When the ship has to operate in sea ice, the challenges to maintaining safety while balancing other requirements increase significantly, not least because of the lack of experience and skill many ship operators have in navigating in ice. Further, as shipping is governed by a host of domestic and international regulations, the criteria by which performance is assessed change over time and jurisdiction. The current international efforts to decarbonize the shipping industry is a case in point: regulations that have been introduced to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of shipping (e.g. the Carbon Intensity Indicator - CII  - and Energy Efficiency Design Indices - EEDI and EEXI) will have a profound impact on what constitutes "good" ship operating performance over the next few years. Simultaneously, the trend of increasing automation and applications of various forms of artificial intelligence on ships is further complicating the role of the ship operator. Under these dynamic workplace conditions, it is essential to maintain a focus on the safety of the operation, as well as the reliability of the overall system. This program does that. We focus on the performance of ship operations - particularly operations that are undergoing disruptions due to changing external forces and changing technologies. We use a unique ship bridge research simulator as an experimental venue to investigate the performance of ship operations under multiple competing and conflicting criteria. The research simulator enables us to do controlled experiments that are otherwise not possible to do, thereby providing novel insights into this complex operation. We will do a set of experiments focused on evaluating the efficacy of a particular aid to navigation in sea ice - specifically a route/speed planning decision support system that includes (i) carbon intensity and (ii) safety associated with operations in sea ice, amongst other factors. The performance of human ship operators will be assessed under a variety of conditions to see how the technology that purports to improve performance actually affects the operational performance and system safety. Importantly, a group of graduate students will be trained in this program. They will learn how to do experiments involving human participants in simulated, controlled environments. Further, they will learn about issues that are critical to the shipping industry, specifically those relating to decarbonization of the industry, as well as the design of safe decision support systems.